What are the best MPVs of all time? I've absolutely no idea... but Buffer, Dropbox and Zappos are three of my favourites.
Grab your FREE Lean Startup Cheat Sheet: http://www.developmentthatpays.com/cheatsheets/the-lean-startup
0:15 - Ground rules for a perfect MVP
1:00 - Buffer's MVP
1:58 - Dropbox's MVP
3:23 - Zappos' MVP
LINKS
- Steven Cohn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/death-minimum-viable-product-steven-cohn
- Buffer: https://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-weeks-how-we-did-it
- Dropbox: http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/dropbox-minimal-viable-product/
- Zappos: http://www.bullethq.com/blog/lean-startup-zappos-how-zappos-validated-their-business-model-with-lean/
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Music: 260809 Funky Nurykabe: ccmixter.org/files/jlbrock44/29186
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35. 3 Awesome Minimum Viable Products (MVPs)
Today, we're going to take a look at three of my favourite examples of Minimum Viable Products (MVPs). Before diving in. let's establish some ground rules for a "proper" MVP It's got to be Minimal It's got to be Viable And it's got to be a Prod... Actually No, it does not need to be a Product. (I'll be showing you a great example of a "non-product" in a minute or two.) Some have argued that the word "Product" in MVP is unhelpful. Steven Cohn has made a strong case for the word "Experiment". I agree. But for now let's stick with the "P" and temporarily re-define it to.... Pre-meditated. Meaning that the MVP must be a deliberate attempt to learn about the market. This rules out cases that look like MVPs in retrospect, but were really full products that - to everyone's surprise - developed into something big. Let's get going. No. 3 - Buffer ------ Buffer is a application that makes it easy to share content on social media. Here's what they put on the their site. A test, certainly. But it falls short of an MVP in my opinion. Their next test was better. They slotted this page in-between the other two pages. Now visitors to the website are not just saying "This is interesting" They're saying "I want to BUY this". Okay, there's nowhere to input your credit card details. But anyone who got this far was at least prepared to think about parting with their money. As co-founder Joel Gascoigne said: "After this result, I didn’t hesitate to start building the first minimal version of the real, functioning product." Minimal - certainly Viable - yes Pre-mediated - check Buffer's current valuation is something close to $400 million No. 2 - Dropbox ---- Dropbox, as I'm sure you know, is a file synchronisation service. Edit a file on your desktop... ... and seconds later its updated on all of your other devices. Rewind to the early days. The team - entirely composed of techies - had the basic synchronisation working. That was the easy bit. The hard bit was going to be to achieve the same trick on pretty well every platform: Mac, Windows, iPhone, etc. Given that the team was all techies, you'd have put money on them diving straight in. But CEO Drew Houston did something surprising. He made a video. The video - just three minutes long - demonstrated the synch process end to end. But it was more than just a demo: it was full of techie in-jokes... designed to appeal to early adopters. It worked like a charm In Drew's words: “It drove hundreds of thousands of people to the website. Our beta waiting list went from 5,000 people to 75,000 people literally overnight. It totally blew us away.” Minimal - Yes Viable - Not a product that could be used, but a product that could be demonstrated. Pre-Meditated - Yes Dropbox went on to do quite well. It's current value stands between $5 and $10 BILLION. No. 1 - Zappos ---- It's 1999. Co-founder Nick Swinmurn wanted to build an online store for shoes. But would people use it Here's how he went about finding out. He popped down to lis local shoe shops he went into the shops and... ... I sh!t you not... he PHOTOGRAPHED PAIRS OF SHOES! The photos were uploaded to a super-simple website. If someone clicked on the button to buy a pair Nick would pop down to the store and... BUY THE SHOES! Zero infrastructure. Zero inventory. Minimal - definitely Viable - This time it's not even up for discussion. Most definitely: real customers; real money changing hands; real shoes! Pre-meditated Check. Zappos went on to do quite well: it was acquired by Amazon in 2009 for a cool $1.2 billion. Your thoughts, please! ---- Buffer, Dropbox and Zappos. Three of my favourite MVPs. What do you think of my choices Any you disagree with Let me know in the comments. And I'd also like to he
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPJoq_QVsY4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjCCS3DxZRo

Am I not recognising the steps here but is this just trying to twist the actual term MVP to mean a step before a real MVP, to just be a proof of concept and learnings? Why twist MVP to mean something else?

If the project is not completed and useless to the client, no one will be interested in a complex architecture, excellent productivity, or extensive functions. You need to implement the most useful features inexpensively and quickly.
Check this company out, they can help you in your MVP startup development: https://axisbits.com/mvp-startup-development

Very informative video, thank you very much for sharing.
Question: Would you consider a prototype (for an app) that enables user-testing to gather feedback to be a MVP?
I am currently developing one, not just to bring my idea to life, but to provide the target audience with the most important features/functions, and get their feedback to guide future development
Thank you

Great, great question: think I need to plan a video on this very subject!
For me, the key difference between a prototype and an MVP... is whether or not the customer thinks/knows it's a prototype.
If you have to do any explaining ("this might not work properly" or "be careful not to click this button") then you're in prototype territory.
What you describe - "provide the target audience with the most important features/function" - sounds to me like an MVP. It's okay to be minimal... but it's important to be "complete". Does that make sense?

love this video, thank you - one small error is the buffer valuation but I can see where you made the mix up ... this popped us a different Buffer (Michael Buffer ring announcer) on a google search"Consequently, Buffer has earned in excess of $400 million with the license for his trademark. By the late 1980s, Buffer was the exclusive ring announcer for all bouts in Donald Trump-owned casinos"..... still all your points hold strong - buffer seem to be valued around the 60m mark in 2016 but i can't verify that...all side points...love your examples especially Zappos and the Buffer click through

A little late to the game but... how about doing a Kickstarter campaign as your MVP? Technically, you don't have to build anything, perhaps a short video of some ppt slides will do, and any backers have to put in real money to back your project. Looks pretty minimal (ppt animation video), viable (pay money to back the project) and pre-meditated (learn about if people are willing to spend money on your idea) to me. Thoughts?

Drew Houstons video was NOT necessarily an MVP. It was a pre laucnh seller demo video. Get the facts right. A minimal viable product is retarded. Just make what you're set out to make and see if there is commercial intent/demand for it by using a beta test. THAT IS AN MVP. Then pre launch it after. Don't let these little acronyms confuse you guys. It's not that complicated

The key words here are "just" and "product". It can be very expensive to "just make" a product. Which begs the question: can you have an MVP that isn't a product?
- "No", if the "P" of the abbreviation - it's not an acronym :) - it taken literally to mean "Product".
- "Possibly", if you (re)define MVP as something that provides "Validated Learning".
The Dropbox MVP wasn't a product. but I'd argue that it did provide validated learning.
One final point: I'm yet to be convinced that Buffer's MVP really was an MVP.

I'm not sure I'm right but it seems to me that the original iPad 1 was actually an MVP for introducing a brand new product category. When you compare its very sparse feature set with the iPad 2, it seems like the 1 was introduced just to gauge market reception.

Ah interesting. I'm not familiar with the story of the first iPad. I know there were plenty of prototypes... but I wonder if Apple did anything between "prototypes" and "iPad Launch" that could be considered an MVP.

It's a great question. Personally, I would start with a survey. But I'd be careful about interpreting the result: what people SAY and what people DO can be very different things. That's a key strength on an MVP: it gets to actual behaviour.
Does that make sense?

It's sometimes easier to understand the concept, if you explain what they did not do. As in; what was the point. :) In some examples, it's obvious in both ways, but in the more trickier ones like DropBox, looking at what they didn't do (at the time) is maybe simpler.
BUFFER - Didn't build a product, but rather gave people a buy button to their "idea" and monitored if enough people wanted to buy. When they had seen the interest they'd like, they started building the product, since they now knew it was in demand.
ZAPPOS - Didn't build a webshop framework, didn't have to look at warehousing, supplier contracts, negotiations, insurance, credit, etc. Instead, he piggybacked existing stores, verfied demand and then started setting up. As a bonus, he would be able to negotiate much better with suppliers since he had proven sales numbers. This could reduce his costs in storage, insurance and shipping, and even product purchase price and thus considerably increase his margins.
DROPBOX - Didn't build a website, product information, marketing, but rather just showed what they had in a simple and effective way. Once their simple (cheap) demo showed proof of interest, the expense in website, marketing, etc. was much more justified, and like with ZAPPOS they could even use it to move quicker from early adopters to actual users; actual users are more likely to get onboard with established products that other people use. So the simple sentence "75,000 happy users so far" could have accellerated their growth in the mainstream market considerably, vs. "Hey, we're new but we think you'll like this". They would also have gained insights and data into which aspects of their service appealed the most, so that they could market these selling points specifically right from the get go, rather than risk a normal marketing campaign "missing the bullseye" as is so often the case when something is a whole new category of product, and noone really understands wherein the value lies yet.

All three MVPs here are different in the approach taken:
BUFFER - They didn't build anything. All they did was see if people would like the idea enough to click on a "Buy" button. The MVP might be described as a FEATURE FAKE.
ZAPPOS - A fully working - albeit non-automated - system. This type of MVP is often called a WIZARD OF OZ MVP
DROPBOX - They had a working prototype (the team could share and synchronise the files between their own computers). So the MVP in this case was the DEMONSTRATION of the working prototype. Although people couldn't USE IT, the video demonstration was good enough for people to understand the VALUE of being able to synchronise files.
Does that clarify it for you?